ROUSSEAU, Théodore

French landscape painter, the friend of Millet and Diaz, who settled at Barbizon in 1844. His aims, style and development are characteristic of the Barbizon SchoolGLOSSARYA group of naturalist landscape painters who worked in the vicinity of Barbizon, a village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleu, southeast of Paris, in the 1840s and 1850s. Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867) was the founder of the group. Other members of the group were Jean-Baptist Corot (French, 1796-1875), Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (French, 1807-1876), Constant Troyon (French, 1810-1865), Jules Dupré (French, 1811-1889), Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), and Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878). Their approach constituted an art movement which eventually led to both Realism and Impressionism. Daubigny was the first of the plein air painters., of which he was one of the principal members. Like others in the group he suffered great hardship as a result of his attempts to introduce a non-academic landscape style, although this did not make him any more understanding or friendly to the Impressionists in later years. He was known as 'le grand refusé', because of his systematic exclusion from the Paris SalonGLOSSARYIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français. between 1836 and 1841 and his abstention between 1842 and 1849.

From 1863 he was deeply interested in Japanese art, at the time when it was just becoming known in Europe.